The projects also involve other industry funders and research organisations.
They will add overall value to the arable industry, clearly reflecting FAR’s strategy to gain the best for its levy-payers through targeted collaborations, FAR chief executive Nick Pyke says.
Each of the projects, which focus on precision agriculture, groundwater and potatoes, would benefit different parts of the cropping sector but ultimately all would add value to the industry, Pyke said.
Included in the funding support would be the transforming variability to profitability project aimed at increasing the uptake of precision agriculture technology through the development of easy-to-use systems for transmitting and interpreting data.
The project would include a stocktake of precision agriculture technologies available in New Zealand and the use of precision agriculture tools to do a geo-spatial analysis of soil characteristics and measure yield and quality of barley, maize and potatoes from those soils.
That would identify soil and crop characteristics associated with profitability.
For growers, the major outcome would be a simple system to allow the development of site-specific crop management plans for geo-spatial soil and crop sensing results.
That would encourage the adoption of precision agriculture and increase the efficiency of inputs such as water, agrichemicals and nutrients.
Collaborators for the project include Landcare Research and Potatoes NZ.
The second project, understanding the quality of the groundwater resource, was developed in conjunction with the Ashburton Water Users Group to collate existing data from groundwater monitoring and modelling.
The project would identify where there were gaps in the knowledge and develop a well monitoring programme to address those gaps.
Each of the projects, which focus on precision agriculture, groundwater and potatoes, would benefit different parts of the cropping sector but ultimately all would add value to the industry.
NICK PYKE
Foundation for Arable Research
The data collected would provide farmers in the Ashburton zone with a better understanding of high risk zones and nitrate variability by season, region, depth and time.
That, in turn, would help them work with regulators to develop management strategies.
It was hoped the project would result in a template that could be used by other regions to collect more data on water quality.
Increasing potato yield through understanding the impact of crop rotation and soil compaction was the third project to get funding.
It aimed to increase potato yields and improve soil quality in potato crop rotations.
It would provide information to growers about how to use different crops to reduce the impact of specific soil-borne diseases, reduce soil compaction and improve soil structure.
It was hoped the results would contribute to a 12% (7.2 tonne/ha) increase in marketable potato yields.
The project would use Potatoes NZ research funding, which is managed by FAR. All the projects start in June.
